Williard E. Stone, life member of the Academy

              12 The Accounting Historians Notebook, Spring, 1993
WILLIARD E. STONE
LIFE MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY
In August, 1991, The Academy of
Accounting Historians elected Dr.
Williard E. Stone to Life Membership in
recognition of his long service to the
Academy and to the community of
scholars in Accounting History. At that
time, only a brief notice of the election
was published. Dr. Richard
Vangermeersch was commissioned to
provide the following comments in honor
of Dr. Stone.
Williard Stone rose through the ranks
in accounting academics the old-fashioned
way—through hard work over a long
period of time. A mathematics graduate of
Penn State in 1933, he joined the
accounting field as an auditor for the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in that
year. He was a principal auditor with the
U.S. General Accounting Office in 1943.
Williard received the CPA Certificate in
1945. In 1947, he became a partner in
Stone and Fisher, CPAs, in Philadelphia
and started his teaching career with the
Wharton School, in which he received his
M.A. in Finance in 1950 and a Ph.D. in
Management and Economics in 1957.
From 1950 to 1952, he also was assistant
to the President and Controller for Rollie
Manufacturing Co. In 1960, Williard
became Chairman of the Accounting
Department at the University of Florida.
He chaired that department for 14 years
and retired from the University of Florida
in 1980. He held visiting posts in such
schools as the University of New South
Wales, The University of Virginia, the
University of Port Elizabeth in South
Africa, the University of Kentucky, and
Deakin University in Australia.
Williard, along with Dr. Gary Previts
and Paul Garner, founded the Academy of
Accounting Historians in 1973. He was
Manuscript Editor of The Accounting
Historians Journal from 1973 to 1980.
While Williard was a frequent
contributor to the accounting literature
since 1956, it was only in 1969 that he
started to publish historical work with
"Antecedents of the Accounting
Profession" published in The Accounting
Review. With the start of the Academy,
Williard also began to produce a prolific
stream of historical pieces. An example of
these are "Accounting Records Reveal
History: The Virginia Cobbler" in the
July, 1976 issue of the Journal of
Accountancy. In 1982, he and Gary Previts
served as editors of the Yushodo American
Historic Accounting Literature. Williard
also conveyed his personal library of over a
thousand books to the Osaka Genkins
Stone Library at the University of Osaka.
Many of his books were autographed.
Williard continues to be an active
contributor to the literature of
accounting. He was recently ranked as the
eighth most prolific writer in 24 academic
journals.
Williard helped to make historical
research in accounting an acceptable
academic endeavor. Those who were not
present in the 1960s and early 1970s
probably fail to realize the struggle it was
to publish pieces in accounting history.
Williard's efforts and lifetime interests in
history and geology have been successful,
and here we are today. Personally, as a
Ph.D. graduate of the University of
Florida, I am proud to write these
comments in honor of a fine gentleman
and scholar, Williard E. Stone.
Richard Vangermeersch
University of Rhode Island